Dearest Majesty, it would be a great honor of mine to proceed as planned. With your permission, I’d suggest my betrothed take a trip to our Ruined City so that we may get to know each other before the wedding.
Signed, Akir Murtaugh, Prince of the Ruined City.
I gathered up the notes quickly, and turned to give them to my Queen. She took them, the top one she set aside, face down, as if that could hide the words that had already been branded in my mind. The queen had arranged a marriage for Princess Keanna with Akir Murtaugh, the eldest prince of the Ruined City.
It was rumored that the Ruined City was rich in technology. After the legendary hybrid beasts attacked the world and left it in ruins, the city had preserved as much of the technology as possible. They were advanced in comparison to us, and were rumored to be savage and cruel.
The Queen sealed three letters, dribbled wax and stamped them with her royal seal. It was the image of bear claws. Then, when she blew them dry, she handed them off to me. “Have these sent out. They’re for the leaders of the clans of the Broken World.” I took them in my fingers, staring down at the fragility of the paper. “Make sure they are sent out without delay. I need an answer as soon as possible. Things are changing, Maude, and we need to seal as many alliances as we can get.”
“Yes, your Majesty. Right away.”
She nodded. “It’s hard to find eligible princess of age to marry sons off to these days.”
I froze, just as I’d started to turn around. My heart seemed to slam up into my throat and stay there, forming a tightness that threatened to claw out in a sob. I tried swallowing past it, but it hurt. I took a deep breath, let it out slowly. The feeling was still there, but I managed, “I’m sure, your Majesty.”
The queen nodded. “Go about your chores, Maude. And careful with your actions. I’d hate to see your reputation ruined, or even worse, to see your heart broken.”
I nodded and walked slowly out of the room. I closed the door softly behind me and leaned against it, letters in my hand. I had the urge to crumble them and to cast them into the fire. That, I could not do. Why did it hurt so much? I wasn’t sure. I knew what I’d been getting myself into. I knew the princes and I would have no future together, and still, this new turn of events hurt in a way it shouldn’t have. I’d never known the queen to be cruel, and what she’d done had shattered my heart to pieces, in a way I never thought possible. Her words and actions had been skillfully calculated. She’d not meant to hurt me, of that I was positive, but to warn me.
It was too late to tell her that my heart was already broken.
Chapter Twenty-One
Aidan
She moved with purpose in her stride. The letters she clutched in her hands were carefully placed, almost gentle, but even I could see the underlying anger in her knuckles, in the way that she moved. Now would be the perfect time to corner her, to tease and taunt. But for some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to do so. Following her was game enough, watching her move, seeing which brother of mine she would run in to. But she trailed the castle, uttering not a word to anyone until she met up with an errand boy.
“The queen demands these letters be sent out immediately.” She handed the letters to him quickly, almost as if they were a hot coal in her palm that she was more than glad to get rid of. “Do it quickly and hurry back. Let there be no delays and have a care with the letters. They’re important.”
She was so commanding, and full of no nonsense. It was what had led me to her in the first place. She was the most fun to bother, because she seemed the hardest to crack. After piercing him with a stern look, she turned around, and found her exit blocked by my enormous frame.
She was so dainty, though rather plump. I liked that sort of figure. I think all my brothers did. Smaller, skinnier girls, girls the size of my sister, seemed like they’d be easier to break. I leaned a shoulder against the wall, crossing my arms over my chest. The grin came naturally, and I knew she despised it with every fiber in her being.
“Good day, Maude.”
Her eyes ran over me, and without a word, she sidestepped and walked away. I blinked at the place where she had been standing, and hurried after her until I fell into step beside her. She kept up her quick pace, unfortunately she wasn’t quick enough.
I cut off her path to stand in front of her again. This time, she wouldn’t flee from me. “Where are you going in such a hurry?” I asked.
She let out a huff and looked around for a way to escape. She wouldn’t find it. I pressed closer to her, and she dodged, pressing her back against the wall. She’d just caged herself in. I smiled, pressed my arms on either side of her against the wall. She tried to make herself smaller.
“Why so angry?” I asked darkly. I could see the workings of her jaw, read the blaze in her brown eyes. There was fire there, and I wanted to bring it out.
“Leave me alone.”
I smirked. Shouldn’t she know by now that I did the opposite of everything I was told? I reached out for her, and trailed my finger over her shoulder, lower to her collarbone, and lower still between the valley of her breasts.
“I thought we were past hostility, Maudey.” It was so easy to fall into play, to pretend to be my brother. She wouldn’t even tell the difference. No one ever could. “The other night in your room…” The truth was, I wasn’t even sure what had happened the other night in her room. Just what she’d implied, and just the reaction of Adahm had been enough to hint as to what had transpired between them. I fell into that seductive role now. Maybe I could woo her, and maybe I’d do an even better job of it than my brothers ever could.
“I’m sorry, Adahm, but I don’t sleep with engaged men.”
I froze, finger poking against the material of her dress. “Engaged?”
She blew out an exasperated breath. “To be married. Your mother is arranging it. She just sent out the letters.”
Fuck.
I dropped my hand from her and looked around the hallway. There was no one. Good. Because what I planned needed discretion. In a quick, angry move, I jerked open the door to the closet closest to us and shoved Maudey inside, closing the door behind us. The space was dark and cramped, pushing me up against her intimately. Good.
She wriggled a bit, her breathing had suddenly become harsh, labored. “Let me out,” she demanded.
“What do you mean engaged?” I asked again.
She let out another exasperated sound “The queen thinks it’s time you found wives. You’re princes, after all. And whatever is between us should end. We have no future together anyway.”
I let out a low growl and cupped her chin, lifting her face up to mine. I could make out the outline of her features, and knew she could see me in the darkness. “There’s just one problem with that, Maudey.”
She swallowed. “And what problem is that?” Her breath was warm and enticing.
I used my other hand to begin unbuttoning the top of her dress. She didn’t move. She let me tear through every single one. I smiled and whipped her around. Yes, this position was much more favorable. Her hips leaned back to press into my hardening dick. She trembled as I ground myself against her.
I bent low to bite down on the lobe of her ear. She let out a soft cry and I smiled against her flesh. “The problem is that I don’t want to give you up.” I flipped up her skirts, exposing the soft mounds of her ass. In a quick movement, I yanked her underwear down, baring her naked before me. “In fact, I’d face a thousand hybrids before I ever gave you up.”
Before she could reply, I had yanked my pants down to free my dick, and I thrust into her to the hilt from behind. She cried out loudly, and I muffled her cries with my palm. She ground herself against me as I began to thrust. I held her close to me, palm covering her mouth. Warm lips pressed tightly against my skin, and she was so tight and wet around me, you’d think we’d have spent hours of foreplay before this moment.
I thrust harder, faster into her. She tried moving against me, grinding her ass down hard
on me. I moved my hand down lower, freeing her mouth to slide down and stroke her throat, cup her chin. She gasped out, and the noise spurred me to move faster, to feel her pussy slide against my dick. She felt so damn good, I couldn’t slow down. I moved faster and faster against her, pressing my fingers against her lips. The tip of her tongue touched my fingertips and I cried out, shoving them into her mouth. She sucked on me, bit down on my skin, and that single action sent a feeling pulling deep inside me. I thrust faster, harder, until I found myself calling out her name and coming inside her. Her sweet scream was a melody that I knew would forever live inside me. A melody that’d turn into something more, and I knew that one day, I’d write a song about this moment, about how she felt so good, and how I wanted nothing more than to keep her there forever.
I pulled out, released her and adjusted myself in the tight space. When I finished, I pulled her underwear up and lowered her skirts. When she turned to me, there was a glint in her eye that shone like diamonds in the darkness. I knew she’d enjoyed it as much as I had.
I bent down and pressed a kiss to her lips, quickly, before pulling away. She smiled. “That was wonderful,” she confessed. She didn’t need to. I knew it had been. “Much better than yesterday, anyway.”
“Hmm?” Had my brothers already tasted her? No matter, she obviously enjoyed my love making more. “Really?”
She nodded vigorously. “I just hope that when you get married, you don’t accidentally call out your mother’s name again. I imagine it would be as awkward for your wife as it was for me.” She shrugged and reached around my stunned body to open the closet door. I was too shocked to do anything but watch her leave, closing the door behind her.
Call out mother’s name?
Gods’ almighty fuck.
Which one of my brothers fucked up this time?
Chapter Twenty-Two
Maude
The charade was never ending. Days passed, and I could tell tensions with the triplets were higher than ever. I supposed I was to blame for that. The lies never stopped, with them or with me. Any time they’d pretend to be someone they weren’t, and for the most part, they all pretended to be Adahm, I’d feel forced to make up something ridiculous about them each time.
You told me yesterday your brother Alastair was a suspected homosexual.
Don’t you remember? Just this morning you said that Aidan was dumber than a boar.
I don’t think your brother smells like rotten fish…
Gods, the lies were getting to be rather exhausting, but even as I came up with the most ridiculous of things, they never let up with their facade, and I doubted they confronted each other either. They just let the lies fester, and it wouldn’t be long now before they exploded.
And when they did, finally, my own charade would end as well, even if my heart was screaming at me because of it. The only reason I’d started this whole facade was to turn them against one another. I hadn’t planned on sleeping with them, with all three of them, but it had just happened, and now I craved them, and didn’t want to turn back.
Despite the queen’s warnings, and the obvious way in which she’d tried to pry me away from them, I couldn’t find the will to do so. Every night or day without fail, one of the brothers would find themselves in my room, or cornering me in a dark part of the castle. Bent on seduction, I’d fall easy victim to it before spinning another strand in my web of lies.
I couldn’t help the way they made me feel. If it weren’t for the lies, I would have tricked myself into believing that they truly cared for me.
I brought my knees up to my chest and stared at the shadows dancing across my wall. My body was tired, though I felt as though sleep was beyond me. I found myself lying awake longer during the night, wondering if I’d make it through this game with my soul still intact.
On queue, the door to my bedroom opened. I didn’t need to look up to know who’d it be. I was well versed in their footsteps, in their routine, if in nothing else. Though I shared intimacy with the brothers, and even though I could tell each one of them apart, we hadn’t shared much beyond that. I don’t think I really knew them at all.
The door clicked into place, a shuffle of feet, and then the bed dipped under his heavy weight. “It wouldn’t do well to make clandestine meeting a habit, Adahm.” I looked up at him then. At the real Adahm. I no longer had to look at his hands to know. At any of their hands. Their identities were there, if one was willing to look hard enough. It was in the tilt of a chin, in the lowering of eyelids, and the manner of their smile.
Adahm was smiling, as though nothing could deter him. In his hands, I noticed, he had a rolled up long piece of paper. “And here I thought you looked forward to my visits.”
I looked forward to his lovemaking. To the company of his smile. As I was sure he was using me for the same thing. He’d never said otherwise, and I’d never asked. I gave him a pointed look, and he held back a laugh.
“Don’t fret, Maudey. Tonight I didn’t come for that, much to your probable disappointment.” My eyebrows raised as he gestured to the paper in his hands. “Tonight, I come bearing a gift.”
I barely moved as he suddenly unrolled the paper and smoothed out the edges to place it on the bed, face up, before me. I lowered my legs in shock, looking at it and then back up at him. His smile was suddenly shy.
“I would have given it to you sooner,” he said. “But I couldn’t seem to get your shade of hair just right…”
My fingers trembled as I picked up the picture. A drawing done in varying colors of charcoal and pastels, of me. The likeliness was perfect, my eyes in the drawing half-lidded, hands on either side of my face, and hair sprawled out beneath me.
“Adahm…” I was breathless, tears stung at the backs of my eyelids and I couldn’t help it, one fell forward, gliding down my cheek.
Adahm leaned forward, palming my cheek. His thumb wiped away the stray tear, the action ever gentle and warm. “I take it you like it?” He smiled.
I chuckled and rolled the drawing back up, handing it back to him. “I don’t deserve this…”
Hurt flashed through his eyes for a mere second. He pushed my hand gently away so that his gift was pressed to my breast. “It’s a gift, Maudey. Please, take it.”
“I don’t deserve it.”
“You deserve it and more. What kind of a man would I be if I couldn’t even gift the woman I love with something so simple as a picture.”
I choked. Love? He seemed to realize what he’d said too late. His face went pale in the shadows. “Adahm…”
“You don’t have to say it back,” he interrupted. “I just wanted you to know how I feel…”
I shook my head and felt the tears fall again. “Adahm, we hardly know each other.” Sure, we had grown up together, but I’d mostly watched from my respectable place. I was a servant, and there was an ocean’s distance between us. It was as true now as it had been back then.
“Does that matter?” Yes. It did. He must have read the answer in my eyes because he followed quickly, “Ask me whatever you want. I’ll be honest.”
Why do your brothers pretend to be you? I couldn’t very well ask him that. I realized that maybe I didn’t know him, didn’t know that part of him, but I knew the important stuff. I knew what made him laugh, and I knew his heart. “You really love me?” I asked.
He smiled and leaned forward. I welcomed the touch of his lips, the warmth of his tongue as he pushed past my own lips to kiss me deeply. When he pulled away, I craved him all over again. “With all my heart,” he replied.
And I smiled, but I couldn’t bear to utter the words we both so desperately wanted to hear, though they may have not been necessary at all.
I love you, too.
Aidan
I’d never been good at bearing my soul for others to see. At first, everything I had done, had been nothing more but a fun game to me. But now the game was real, and what I hadn’t wanted to happen was happening. My heart thumped louder when she was near
. Soon, I longed desperately for her presence, to hear the sound of her voice. My want for her became an unbearable thing inside me that I couldn’t unleash in any other way other than writing it in a song.
The words came to me, sprung from the deepest parts of my heart. There were times when I wanted her for myself, which was surprising. I’d never wanted anything to myself before. With her, I found I sometimes did. And then there were other times, times when Adahm or Alastair would come into our room, a look of complete bliss on their face, when I felt pure happiness implode in my chest. I didn’t mind sharing. Not if it meant she was putting that expression on their faces. Not if it meant that we all got to be happy, as long as it was with her.
It wasn’t an easy task to sneak my ukulele from our room without arousing suspicion. But I had to find her. I wanted to bestow upon her this one gift, just once, I’d be revealing a piece of myself to someone else besides my brothers. And the thought of doing so terrified me.
I almost turned tail to run, but pushed on as I looked for her.
When I finally found her, I nearly froze in place. I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak until she turned away from the task at hand to look at me. She smiled, and it was genuine, the kind she’d never gifted me with before. I wanted to believe that she was giving the smile purely to me, because she knew me in her heart of hearts. Though she was probably smiling because of who she thought I was. And that was perfectly fine, too. I’d take what she gave, and I wouldn’t question or demand more.
My ukulele was hidden behind my back. The kitchen staff had stopped what they were doing to dip into curtsies and bows. I ignored them, instead focused all of my attention on this single, beautiful woman before me.
She dipped into a proper curtsey, and I almost told her that it was unnecessary. She didn’t have to bow to me, when it was I who should have bowed to her.
“Maude,” I whispered rather breathlessly. “May I speak with you for a moment?”
Hers From The Start: A Collection of First In Series Reverse Harem Page 72